Having Fun in Learning for the Visually Impaired: On Blind Accessibility in Educational Video Games

Publication Date

2-18-2026

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Smart Technologies for Sustainable Development Goals Quality Education

DOI

10.1201/9781003646075-17

First Page

294

Last Page

310

Abstract

Video games have become the main source of entertainment enjoyed by many people all around the world. Educational video games aim to teach different concepts in effectively amusing ways, ranging from gaining common knowledge, problem-solving, to honing more grounded knowledge. There is however an underlying, overlooked problem with the current evolution of video games – the issue of accessibility, including blind accessibility. As games gravitate towards graphics and visual representations to tie in with the overall story and gameplay, it often negatively affects the scope of its users without including the visually impaired, who are therefore largely ignored by developers to be considered as user base. This chapter aims to improve the blind accessibility of quality education brought by video games through smart technologies. It presents an overview of educational video games and the current research for blind accessibility in video games. It also describes the common practices streamlined for the current industry in developing games specially designed for blind users. The chapter further explains how to turn an ordinary video game to be blind-accessible and illustrates with a concrete example the development of a prototype for this purpose. Finally, the chapter concludes with future research opportunities by suggesting imminent topics and improvements for providing blind-accessible, highly effective, fun educational video games. We believe that this chapter would bring more attention to this important, yet often unheeded, topic, and would be a significant contribution to the inclusiveness of smart technologies for quality education.

Department

Computer Science

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